Conference Papers

Museums and the Web: An International
Conference
Los Angeles, CA, March 16 - 19, 1997

H. Thomas Hickerson

Cornell University
Prepared for Presentation at Museums and the Web
An International Conference, Los Angeles, CA, March 16 - 19, 1997

Realizing New Means
Networked Access to Research Collections

The combination of digital imaging, distributed computing, and
high-speed networking technologies has ushered in a new era in the use of
image and information resources. Electronic communication is altering
patterns of scholarship and collaboration. During the next decade, digital
technology will play a vital role in enabling dramatic changes in
university teaching and research. These changes will be accompanied by and
promoted by transforming shifts in the organization, economics, and methods
of higher education.

My comments focus on the development of digital collections based on
cultural and scientific resources, and I will describe representative
examples, analyzing the concepts underlying their composition and use. I
will discuss the methods of funding and creating each and offer some
critical observations on their success in meeting envisioned goals. The
provision of networked access to research collections can be seen as a
paradigm illustrative of more extensive changes affecting higher education
and cultural repositories.

At Cornell University, a remarkable array of historical, artistic, and
scientific resources are available via the Web. In my roles as Director of
the University Library's Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections and of
the campus-wide Digital Access Coalition, I have participated in the
creation of several of these resources. The use of World Wide Web
technology provided a critical transition from our initial CD-ROM
applications. In the case of some users and uses, the change was not
initially viewed as an improvement, but the Web has quickly become the
standard for networked access to digital collections. Although the
underlying technologies may change significantly, it is likely that the Web
will remain the model and the metaphor for ubiquitous, global, Internet
computing for some time.

In using the term digital collection, I will be primarily referring to
digital surrogates of images, objects, sounds, specimens, and texts that
presently exist or have previously existed in other media, but there is no
reason to exclude items that have only existed in digital form from this
definition. Collections are usually based on common thematic
characteristics and/or common provenance of creation or organization, and
are shaped by curatorial intent, projected use, and issues of ownership and
project delineation. Collection definition is also provided by the links
employed in the organizing of access to and navigation within the
collection.

On-line exhibitions are not the same as digital collections. In most
cases, curatorial intent, projected use, and selection criteria differ
significantly. It is likely, however, that the two will often be employed
in combination.

Each of these projects represent different organizational and
professional collaborations. At Cornell, the principal participants have
been the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections (RMC) , the Digital
Access Coalition (DAC), and the Interactive Multimedia Group (IMG).

RMC is Cornell's major repository of antiquarian printed books, manuscrip
ts, and University Archives. It is also the largest repository of visual
resources, holding over one million photographs, paintings, prints, and
other visual media.

The Digital Access Coalition is a cooperative effort by librarians,
archivists, curators, technologists, and teaching faculty from across the
campus to develop a new vision for organizing, accessing, and using the
University's various historical, ethnographic, artistic, and natural
history collections. The Coalition was established in 1992 with the support
of the University Librarian and the Vice President for Information
Technologies. It is located in the Library and operates under the auspices
of the University Provost. It was co-directed by Geri Gay (Associate
Professor, Department of Communication) and myself from 1993 through 1996.

The Interactive Multimedia Group was formed in 1987 by Professor Gay.
IMG staff regularly engage in the design, research, and teaching of
interactive multimedia computing. Evaluators, designers, programmers, and
researchers work in concert to develop interactive multimedia programs that
meet the needs of users, demonstrate key issues in multimedia design, and
result in research findings that contribute knowledge about leading-edge
interactive technologies.

Other campus partners include the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, the
Department of Preservation (University Library), the Laboratory of
Ornithology, the History of Art Department, the Theory Center (Center for
Theory and Simulation in Science and Engineering), the slide libraries of
the College of Architecture, Art, and Planning and of the History of Art
Department, the Computer Science Department, Cornell Plantations, and
Cornell Information Technologies.

New projects currently in planning include:

Digital conversion of the bulk of the holdings of the Johnson Museum;

Networked access to instructional and research sources of the Cornell
Plantations, the University's principal botanical garden; and

An international collaboration with the National and University Library
of Iceland and the Árni Magnússon Institute of Iceland to provide
integrated multi-lingual access to Saga and Old Norse literature.

The diverse alliances evident in these projects are a central aspect of
this new technical and organizational environment. Realizing the full
potential of emerging technologies to both improve access to university
collections and to enhance research and teaching requires the development
of new cooperative models that are dependent on interaction across
professions, as well as disciplines.

Louis Agassiz Fuertes

Louis Agassiz Fuertes was an accomplished naturalist recognized by
ornithologists as this country's greatest painter of birds. Fuertes'
paintings are held by museums across the country, but the largest
collection of his artwork, including over 1,000 pieces, is owned by the
Cornell Library. In addition to his paintings and drawings, our collection
also includes letters, sketchbooks, diaries, field notes, and photographs.
At Cornell, Fuertes' works are also held by the Johnson Museum of Art and
the Laboratory of Ornithology.

The Fuertes site includes a "virtual expedition" tracing the 1899
Harriman Expedition to Alaska through the text of the journal that Fuertes
kept during the trip. This section is designed to provide access to
information about the expedition in a variety of ways, including text,
maps, images, and sound. An initial screen shows a map tracing the route
of the expedition. Clicking on any spot along the route will retrieve the
journal pages describing events at that location. Journal pages can also
be retrieved sequentially, or by specific date. Within each journal entry,
the names of birds are highlighted. Clicking on the highlighted text will
provide thumbnail images of that bird, as depicted by Fuertes. Attached to
each thumbnail image are links to the full-screen image, information
describing the painting, and to the bird's call or song, based on digital
recordings from Cornell's Library of Natural Sounds. Journal pages have
been transcribed for easy reading, but bit-mapped scans of the original
manuscript pages are also linked to each transcription. These images
provide a researcher with the original handwritten text, but are also
critical for the drawings they contain and his visual renderings of bird
songs.

In its original version, the site also included an electronic version of
Of a Feather: Audubon and Fuertes, an exhibition at Cornell's Johnson
Museum, July 5-August 21, 1994. This "exhibition without walls" allowed
the user to view the exhibit by clicking on a particular "gallery" on the
screen, displaying thumbnail images of the pictures exhibited in the
Museum. Clicking on the image itself provided a full-screen version of the
image. Additionally, there were comparisons of the artwork of Alexander
Wilson, John James Audubon, and Fuertes, as well as links to the Alaska
Expedition journal. The site is visually and intellectually engaging and
was recognized by PC/Computing as one of 1995's "best free sites on the
Internet."

The initial conversion of Fuertes' artwork was conducted as a component
of Cornell's participation in the Kodak Library Image Consortium. This
joint project of Cornell, the University of Southern California, the
Commission on Preservation and Access, and Eastman Kodak Company was
designed to test and evaluate the applicability of Kodak's Photo-CD
technology for the kind of large-scale use envisioned by museums,
libraries, and archives (1992-1994). The development of the Web site was
funded in part by the Council on Library Resources as part of a project to
develop and test tools for multimedia access to collections (1994-1995).
Today, we have withdrawn the exhibition section of the site and have added
Web access to 2,648 images with complete cataloging and indexing for each
image. These works represent the complete holdings of all three Cornell
collections. Completing image conversion and entering existing cataloging
data was supported by a private gift. Although the creation and
maintenance of this site has been partially funded by external resources,
significant costs have still fallen on the Library. A rough approximation
of total project direct costs is $55,000.

This was our first Web site, initially constructed in the summer of
1994, and I think that it is probably our most successful effort to date to
provide a research collection digitally. We started out with a coherent
theme that effectively integrates intellectual and navigational approaches.
We envisioned five potential research constituencies: historians of
science, art historians, biologists, ethnographers, and birders. The
nature of our sources and the focus on the Harriman Expedition allowed us
to think explicitly about the needs of potential users and what would
increase the value of the site to each clientele. Importantly, we have
also created a "virtual collection," bringing together works, that while
being located on the same campus, have probably never been used in
combination.

Other than multimedia design classes, this database has not been used
systematically on campus so our evaluation data is selective. We have been
dependent on observations by Cornell ornithologists and occasional comments
from remote users. We have responded to these and have improved the site.
We made a major addition by adding the complete collection, previously on
CD-ROM, to the site. We also removed the exhibition. We did not believe
that segment was sufficiently strong, and that there are real questions
regarding the extent to which on-line exhibitions should be "permanent."
On the other hand, research collections must be citeable over time. This
suggests that one must have a clear sense of purpose and plan accordingly.

Our use of bird songs is amateurish. We have a good deal more to learn
about the use of sound. Further significant enhancement could be made by
adding the letters that Fuertes wrote home during the expedition. We have
adopted a questionable practice in that our links to sketches and paintings
for each bird include works Fuertes did elsewhere, as well as those made in
Alaska. Because the painting are linked to the catalog with full
descriptive data, it is relatively easy for a user to make such
distinctions, but perhaps we are being misleading. Ethnographers could
benefit from the inclusion of more photographs. Interestingly, these small
snapshots are much more effective as digitized surrogates than in their
original form.

A principal reason for the success of this effort is the effective
integration of compelling visuals with significant textual information. We
must remember that the speed with which the Web was adopted is based on the
remarkable improvement these graphic displays offered over gopher
technologies. While the novelty has worn off, this feature has become an
even more essential requirement for attracting casual, instructional, and
research users.

The Utopia Project

Under the auspices of the Digital Access Coalition, the Utopia Project
has created a thematically-related electronic database of descriptive
information linked to digitized images. The database is nearing completion
and will include 5,000 images focusing on the art and architecture of the
Italian Renaissance. Of the initial 5,000 images, approximately 4,000 have
been selected from the slide collections of the College of Architecture,
Art, and Planning and of the Department of History of Art in the College of
Arts and Sciences, with the remaining 1,000 from illustrations in printed
books in the Library's rare book collection and works of art on paper in
the Johnson Museum.

This pilot implementation is an enterprise involving colleges and other
units across the university and drawing on a wide range of personnel and
resources. The project was developed by a steering committee comprised of
Claudia Lazzaro, Chair of the History of Art Department, Margaret Webster,
Visual Resources Curator in the College of Architecture, Art, and Planning,
and myself, and is being administered by DAC. Financial resources have
been provided by the Deans of Arts and Sciences and Architecture, Art, and
Planning, the University Provost, and the campus Humanities Council's Fund
for Research in the Humanities. Direct contributions have totaled $97,500.
Additionally, hardware and software and server maintenance have been
provided by staff of the Cornell Theory Center, under the direction of
Marcy Rosenkrantz, Associate Director of Supercomputing Technologies.
While the database has run on a desktop machine, not a supercomputer, this
involvement by the staff of a scientific and engineering facility in a
humanities-based project is unusual at Cornell, and I suspect elsewhere.

This database has had significant classroom use and some research use.
It was initially used in a seminar on Renaissance and Baroque Prints in
Spring 1995, and since then in Vincent Mulcahy's large Introduction to
Architecture classes in Fall 1995 and 1996, in a Renaissance Culture
course, and now in Professor Mary Woods' History of Architecture course.
Systematic evaluation has been conducted in all of the courses. My
colleague Noni Korf Vidal (Curator for Visual and Electronic Resources) has
prepared a paper for this conference in which she describes the results in
detail. In general, student evaluations are overwhelmingly positive. They
found Utopia easy to use on the Web. Most agreed that it was an intuitive
system and that they needed little instruction in order to begin using the
database. They liked having a Keyword field with all the Subject and
Object Type terms and significant words from the Titles grouped together.
They were very enthusiastic about the Browse capability that allows viewers
to browse through just the images in a search result, as well as viewing
them with titling or full cataloging, and they would like to see the Browse
feature extended to other searchable fields (at themoment, it's limited to
Keyword, Object Class, and sets specifically chosen for a particular
class).

On the negative side, slow response time is a ubiquitous source of
discontent. Nor do students like having to go through two screens of
information in order to look at the high resolution image. They want more
flexibility to move around in the database without having to look at the
full data for each thumbnail as an intermediate step. They want to be able
to save the thumbnails from one search and add to or refine their search.
Naturally, they want to be able to zoom in and out and download and print
good quality images for future study or to review on their own systems.

Faculty evaluations have also been positive. They have greater concern
about color and resolution quality, and they want more sophisticated
searching capabilities. Most importantly, faculty feel that it is crucial
to add more images in order for the Utopia database to fully meet their
teaching and study needs.

Selection of images for this database has been conducted in direct
cooperation with teaching faculty. This has insured its utility. I think
that this direct involvement in shaping content is essential to use and
critical to campus funding. Furthermore, we have provided significant
technical support for initial implementations. This assistance will remain
important for some time, and it puts us in a good position to make
effective evaluations of content and technology.

Many of the images converted did not present licensing issues, but some
do. We contacted several slide producers and in a few cases the museums
holding the original works from which the slides were produced. Some
licenses have been negotiated, and others are under discussion. We have
limited access by IP address in order to comply with contractual
commitments.

Cataloging of images has drawn on existing data but has also required
some original work. All data has required editing and fielding, and we
have developed browse features based on the data, as well as exact
searches. Use by faculty in both architecture and the history of art has
resulted in cataloging differences based on the manner in which these two
disciplines approach their sources. These differences continue in theory
but often disappear in practice. The on-line environment offers ways to
harmonize distinctions that are problematic in traditional slide
collections. The inclusion of searchable descriptions is a critical asset
to the digital file. With today's projection equipment, slides are still
more effective for classroom display of images, but searchable cataloging
provides students with a much more powerful and creative means of
conducting their study and research. Faculty have been surprised by
associations among images based on features other than the traditional
elements of creator and location. This kind of unified, yet dynamic,
access to both information and images has the potential to reshape teaching
and research to take into account a wide range of cultural artifacts and to
encourage interdisciplinary and cross-cultural approaches to learning.

Museum Educational Site Licensing Project

Cornell is one of seven universities and seven collecting institutions
participating in the Museum Educational Site Licensing Project (MESL).
MESL links six museums and the Library of Congress with the seven
universities in a collaborative research effort to define the terms and
conditions for the educational use of digitized museum images and related
information and to explore and promote the educational benefits of digital
access to museum collections. The project was launched by the Getty Art
History Information Program, now the Getty Information Institute, and will
continue through June 1998. MESL participants are developing a model
educational site license, testing and evaluating procedures for the
collection and distribution of museums' digital images and information,
assessing the impact of this distribution in both technical and economic
terms, and evaluating educational benefits on the seven campuses.

During this project, the participating museums are providing digital
images and information to the universities without charging any royalty
fees. It is assumed that each institution will provide for campus-wide
access and will make use of the images in unique ways. An assessment of
the uses of the images at each university will provide information that
will lead to a better understanding of how digital image providers and
users can benefit mutually and provide the basis for future licensing
arrangements.

The MESL database contains images of paintings, prints, photographs,
textiles, and various cultural artifacts. The image selections from each
museum vary greatly. For instance, the National Museum of American Art
chose to present a sample of their collection by providing representative
works from numerous artists. At the other end of the spectrum, the Library
of Congress in its initial contribution chose to present the work of one
American photographer, Carl Van Vechten. The objects themselves also vary.
While the images from the National Gallery of Art are largely paintings,
the Fowler Museum of Cultural History, the Harvard University Art Museums,
and the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston provided a significant range of
cultural artifacts, including textiles, furniture, ceremonial artifacts,
and documentary photographs of objects in use. During the life of the
project, originally two years and now extended to three, access to the
images is provided freely to anyone at the participating institutions with
the understanding that users will adhere to conditions of use designed to
protect the copyrights of the museums.

At Cornell, faculty interested in using the MESL database were urged to
contact the MESL coordinator at Cornell, Noni Korf Vidal, to discuss how we
could help in incorporating the database into the curriculum, but we have
had much less direct involvement in the use of the MESL database than in
the case of the Utopia Project. In the case of Associate Professor Laura
Meixner's use of images of paintings from the National Gallery of Art, the
National Museum of American Art, and the Harvard University Art Museums
into the teaching of her course, "Painting and Everyday Life in Nineteenth
Century America," we created an on-line study guide. This year we have
created a "Virtual Gallery of Impressionist Images" for use with her
current course, "Impressionism and Society." Browsing the Gallery, one can
explore major themes represented by French and American Impressionist
painters. Also included are seventeenth- and eighteenth-century artists
who significantly influenced the Impressionists. Professor Meixner and
Johnson Museum staff have also curated an exhibit of Impressionist prints
from the Johnson holdings and have installed a computer in the study
gallery so that visitors can also access the MESL "Virtual Gallery."

Nationally, the overarching goal of the project is to define the terms
and conditions under which digitized museum images and information can be
distributed over campus networks for educational use. The three principal
objectives are:

Develop, test, and evaluate procedures and mechanisms for the
collection and dissemination of museum images and information.

Propose a framework for a broadly-based system for the distribution of
museum images and information on an on-going basis to the academic
community.

Document and communicate experience and discoveries of the
project.

In pursuit of these objectives, numerous activities have been initiated.
Formal studies are underway, including project economics (Howard Besser,
University of California, Berkeley, supported by The Andrew W. Mellon
Foundation) and a user study (Geri Gay and Robert Rieger, Cornell
University, supported by The Getty Information Institute). The results of
these studies and project reports are forthcoming.

Project collaboration has been impressive. These fourteen different
institutions, working with minimal external support, have accomplished a
great deal. The six museums and the Library of Congress each converted
1,000-1,500 pieces to digital form. (In most cases, conversion was
conducted as part of this project, but a couple of museums had already
initiated significant digitization efforts.) Image files, created by
different means and using different conventions, were transferred to the
University of Michigan, along with cataloging data for the images. At
Michigan, some verification and normalization was conducted, and files were
sent on to each university. At each university, access to the images and
information was limited to faculty, students, and staff by IP address.
Local mounting of the files and user access was conducted using different
hardware, software, and approaches. Although at Cornell initial access was
via CD-ROM, all institutions now employ Web access. Individualized
approaches to conversion and independent mounting of the same database on
seven campuses was wasteful, but it did result in the development of
greater local experience and expertise than would have been the case with a
consolidated approach.

Selection and distribution of objects was conducted in two rounds,
including a minimum of 500 images each time. In the initial round, there
was very little opportunity for expressions of faculty preference.
Although the museums were responsive to requests during the second round,
the timeline for conversion did not mesh well with the academic calendar.
Greater faculty involvement would have been beneficial in insuring a better
match between their interests and database content. Faculty are also
hesitant to devote the necessary time to influence the development of a
resource that may not be available in a year or two. I think that
participants failed to recognize this issue in initial planning.
Nonetheless, the database is very rich, and it has been used creatively
across the country.

In concluding my comments regarding MESL, I want to express a few
observations regarding the cataloging of museum holdings. In the initial
compilation of museum data, the inconsistency between the cataloging from
the various museums was surprising to us all, and significantly limited
searching capabilities. This inconsistency was evident in terminology and
vocabulary, but more importantly, comparable data elements were not always
present. I do not think that this reflects a lack of common knowledge
regarding cultural collections. I think that it results in part from the
fact that existing collection management data was not been designed to
provide user access. Without a tradition of public access to catalog
information, description has been based on internal needs. Now a very
different approach is needed, and I wonder if recent efforts to develop
common descriptive standards have focused sufficiently on user access
criteria. Existing museum computer systems also appear to focus almost
exclusively on collection management processes. To some degree this is
alleviated by the capabilities being designed into Web browsers and public
kiosks, but future cataloging practices should be designed to support
distributed research access.

The Project to Democratize Access to Multimedia Collections

Democratizing Access to Multimedia Collections is a privately-funded
project directed by Geri Gay and myself. Principal objectives of this
project included providing networked classroom and research access to
manuscript collections, graphic arts, and historical artifacts and
evaluating their use by college and K-12 students. The Web site,
"Invention and Enterprise: Ezra Cornell, A Nineteenth-Century Life," is
one of the products of this effort and includes: an on-line exhibition; a
guide to the Ezra Cornell Papers in the Division of Rare and Manuscript
Collections; 30,000 scanned manuscript pages; and links to books and
journals digitized as part the Mellon Foundation-sponsored Making of
America Project. In addition to broad general use, the Web site is
currently being used by a local fourth grade class (Cayuga Heights
Elementary School) as part of their course on New York State History.

The Ezra Cornell site is representative of a model that may become
increasingly common. An exhibition with substantial visual and historical
appeal provides the initial point of entry for a broad range of users, as
well as providing an introductory narrative and introducing navigational
devices. Some users may limit their use to this one component, but are
encouraged through explicit links to access additional digital
reproductions of documents, objects, and graphic images. Sites may also
include archival finding aids, either providing an overview of the larger
collection available at the holding repository or providing searching and
navigational support for collection access on-line. This combination may
attract a diverse audience while enhancing overall utility.

Another component in the Democratizing Access to Multimedia Collections
Project was the creation of an on-line version of "Paper, Leather, Clay and
Stone," an exhibition conveying a history of written communication over
4,500 years, concentrating on the way the medium of communication shaped
and was shaped by the message. The original exhibition was created with a
particular focus on a high school audience and was curated in cooperation
with a local high school teacher and faculty from Cornell's Near Eastern
Studies Department. Other project components include Professor Gay's
collaboration with the British Museum in London, the National Museum of
Ethnology in Osaka, Japan, and IBM-Japan in the creation of a Global
Digital Museum (GDM). Museum staff are presently digitizing selected
holdings from the two museums. These materials will form the core of the
GDM Web site, and electronic learning resource packs (GDM Books) available
to primary and secondary educators throughout the world.

New Projects

In concluding this review, I will briefly describe three new projects.
Over the next two years, the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art On-line
Project will create high-resolution digital surrogates for the majority of
the Johnson's permanent collection (20,000+ items), accompanied by
description and indexing. Images of paintings, photographs, prints, and
sculptures will be made available via the Web. On-line kiosks will enhance
the onsite experience, incorporating the fullness of the holdings with
exhibited works. This project will dramatically enhance public and
University access to the holdings and significantly increase their utility
for classroom teaching and research. The project will be jointly managed
by Peter Hirtle (DAC Assistant Director) Carol DeNatale (Museum Registar).
Joint selection and implementation of an image and object management system
by major image repositories across the campus will also be conducted.
Projected total costs are currently estimated at about $550,000.

This project includes major new challenges. Technical issues include
the difficulties in effectively capturing digitally large artworks and
three-dimensional objects and doing this in production environment. There
are also special challenges in supporting effective display and use of
these same items. It is hoped that some of the new technologies from
IBM-Japan being tested in the Global Digital Museum may be employed in
multi-directional viewing of sculptures and artifacts. Curators will have
to make numerous selection decisions regarding items for inclusion without
previous experience in the compilation or use of such a resource.

During the next two years, staff of the Interactive Multimedia Group and
the Digital Access Coalition will assist the Cornell Plantations in the
systematic employment of digital technology to integrate taxonomic and
historical data with real-time field study. This project will expand
public and academic access to this important botanical collection,
enhancing its utility, linking it to related collections, and testing
hand-held and wireless devices for field study and public touring.
Preliminary planning has begun on a related pilot project to improve access
to botanical specimens and historical data held by the L. H. Bailey
Hortorium, linking this data to the developing Plantations database.

In the initial review of the Plantations database, I was struck by the
importance of experienced designers in developing these Web collections.
Questions of color, layout, and the selection and placement of navigational
icons are critical to user appeal and effective use. While multimedia
design is a rapidly expanding field, how many museums or libraries employ
staff with this training and experience?

SagaNet is a joint project of the National and University Library of
Iceland and Cornell University to establish and develop the founding
component of an Icelandic National Digital Library. This cooperative
effort will draw on holdings which in combination form the world's most
extensive collection on Icelandic history, language, and literature. This
project will create an electronic database and provide world-wide access to
a remarkable research resource for the study of the Icelandic Sagas and
epic poetry and for Scandinavian medieval studies.

The project will create high-quality digital images of the full texts of
manuscript copies of Icelandic Sagas and rímur poetry (epic poetry on Saga
motifs) and of printed editions and translations of the Sagas, as well as
relevant critical studies published before 1901. Grayscale and color
scanning will be employed in the conversion of vellum and paper manuscripts
held by the National and University Library of Iceland and the Árni
Magnússon Institute of Iceland, and high-resolution bitonal conversion from
microfilm will be used for most of the printed volumes held by the Cornell
University Library. In total, some 380,000 manuscript pages and 145,000
printed pages will be converted.

SagaNet will provide a unique model for the cooperative development of
national digital libraries with international audiences, illustrating the
potential that these technologies offer for the building of virtual
collections accessible globally. The project will test the technical,
economic, and qualitative viability of a model for international remote
access to digital collections based on simultaneous, coordinated searching
of existing on-line public access catalogs. This approach will utilize the
capabilities of the International Standards Organization (ISO) Z39.50
standard in combination with World Wide Web technologies to provide
integrated searching of distributed, and in this case, multi-lingual
library catalogs and to furnish relevant full-text resources.

The utility of this database in supporting research, classroom, and
public use of the full text of a definitive body of cultural literature
will be systematically evaluated. Testing will incorporate both
qualitative and quantitative evaluation. Quantitative studies will
investigate both micro- and macro-economic issues, exploring the potential
effects of digital library development on broader social, political, and
economic conditions. Projected costs total $1.3 million, and if fully
funded, this project will be a groundbreaking effort in the development of
international research collections.

Preparing for Tomorrow

There are still some who see networked access as a threat replacing
onsite research use to the detriment of our mission and rationale for
existence. I am certain of the continued importance of our curatorial,
preservation, and interpretation roles in maintaining our cultural and
scientific heritage and feel that networked access will both advertise our
holding and promote their value. However, while I am convinced of these
points, it does not really matter in the same way anymore. We are working
in a new environment in which our success is in part dependent on the
proficiency with which we provide networked access and interpretation of
our holding and on how effectively such access is in shapinga new profile
for cultural and scientific repositories. A transformation is in process;
the rules and rewards are changing; and we must imagine new models, devise
new strategies, and employ new techniques.